Undergraduate Thinking

To the Editor of the Bulletin:

Not without a dint of quilty conscience have we younger graduates and lingering students of Harvard seen the recent editorial comment in regard to the present tendencies of thought in the student body at the University. We have been constantly reminded of the ecumenical wave of "radicalism" that is sweeping the undergraduate off his intellectual feet. We have heard with deadening conviction the results of the diagnosis of students' marks. We have almost recoiled in despair at the revival of the old question of social distinctions, and the intolerant, glib exegesis that has naturally followed. Our guilty conscience has not been due to any secret lamentation and outward enthusiasm for such signs, but rather to the feeling that our fathers may have sufficiently detached themselves from the pulse of student life to misunderstand the proclivities for such things as we see them. And it is with this in mind that I am venturing to suggest some real facts as they are seen by one who has been in close relation with the students during the time of cataclysmical change.

"During the years I have been a student, I have witnessed a gradual increasing in the contact between students and professors' homes regularly, for teas, social chats, and discussions, to be one of the salvations of the situation. If I am not mistaken, the level of undergraduate thought can be raised or lowered by this means. I am sure that most graduates look back on their college career with pleasure because of the personal contact with the instructors. The recent war has opened more homes to students than ever before. The contact with the members of cultured families cannot but be influential. The students are realizing more and more since the war the artificial atmosphere of the College, and they are seeking to break down the fulsome barriers that they feel are artificial, and to let out their pent-up enthusiasm where the "bel-monde" will stop and listen. And it is just here that the undesirable intellectual pawn-brokers that live about Cambridge become important. They are extremely good listeners as well as advisers.

The solution, I believe, may be partly found in the suggestion that I have offered above. I do not advocate any hob-nobbing with professors, but I do plead for more Sunday afternoons at President Lowell's, more Sunday evenings at Professor Hurlbut's, more Monday afternoons at Professor Lowes's, and above all, for a still more informal, intelligent Faculty tea system. HAROLD A. EHRENSPERGER 1G.   In the Alumni Bulletin.